Population control in Singapore
Encyclopedia
Population control
in Singapore spans two distinct phases: first to slow and reverse the boom in births that started after World War II
; and then, from the 1980s onwards, to encourage parents to have more children because birth numbers had fallen below replacement levels. Government eugenics
policies flavoured both phases.
Family planning
was introduced to Singapore
in 1949 by volunteers that started clinic
s offering contraception
, but despite government financial support there was no official government policy on family planning until the 1960s. In 1966, the Family Planning and Population Board (FPPB) was established, initially advocating small families but eventually pushing for zero population growth
into what became popularly known as the Stop at Two programme, also referred to in academia as the "anti-natalist" era. This programme pushed for small two-children families and promoted sterilisation through various incentives and laws for all society. From 1969 it was also used by government leaders to target lowly-educated and low-income women in an experiment with eugenics
policies to solve social concerns.
By 1982, government leaders such as then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew
became worried by the demographic trend that the educated were less likely to marry and procreate than the uneducated, leading to the "dilution of innate human talent" in Singapore. This concern drove various changes in policy that culminated in the Graduate Mothers' Scheme. Announced by then Minister for Education
Goh Keng Swee
on January 23, 1984, the policy gave the children of mothers with a university degree priority in the often heavily-competitive primary school placement and registration process
over the lesser-educated. This issue faced large outcry in the 1984 general elections and was scrapped by the incoming Minister of Education Tony Tan Keng Yam mid-1985.
At the same time, Singapore, like other countries facing industrialisation
and economic development
, had been undergoing the demographic transition
and birth rates had fallen precipitously, a trend only reinforced by the Stop at Two programme. The government had begun to reverse the policy, and officially announced its replacement Have Three or More (if you can afford it) in 1987, while the government continued its efforts to ameliorate the quality and quantity of the population through various incentives, including baby bonus
schemes while discouraging low-income families from having children. The Social Development Unit
(SDU) was also established in 1984 to promote marriage and romance between educated individuals.
Different sources have offered differing judgments on the government policies' impact on the population structure of Singapore. While Stop at Two has been described as basically successful — indeed, in the words of Lee Hsien Loong
, "over-successful", skeptics of interventionism claim that it is impossible to separate the effects of government policy from the effects of the natural and spontaneous demographic transition — noting that the government's attempts at reversing the falling birth rates due to the demographic transition have been less than successful.
saw its peak birth rate.)
Family planning
was introduced to Singapore
in 1949 by a group of volunteers that eventually became the Family Planning Association of Singapore and established numerous sexual health clinic
s offering contraception, treatments for minor gynecological ailments, and marital advice
. Until the 1960s there was no official government policy in these matters, but the postwar British colonial administration
, followed by the Singaporean government, played an increasingly important role by providing ever larger grants to the Association, as well as land for its facilities network, culminating in 1960 with a three-month nationwide family planning campaign that was jointly conducted by the Association and government. The population growth rate slowed from 4-5% per year
in the 1950s to around 2.5% in 1965 around independence. The birth rate had fallen to 29.5 per thousand individuals, and the natural growth rate had fallen to 2.5%.
Singapore's population expansion can be seen in the graph below:
in overcrowded shophouse
s; and the bulk of the work of the Housing Development Board had not yet been completed. In 1947, the British Housing Committee Report noted Singapore had "one of the world’s worst slum
s — ‘a disgrace to a civilised community'", and the average person per building density was 18.2 by 1947 (high-rise buildings had yet to be constructed en masse); about 550,000 people lived in squalid squatter settlements or "ramshackle shophouse
s" by 1966. Rapid population growth
was perceived as a threat to "political stability and living standards" that lead to population overcrowding that would overwhelm employment opportunities and social services in education, health and sanitation.
Despite their fall since 1957, birth rates in the 1960s were still perceived as high. On average, a baby was born every 11 minutes in 1965; Kandang Kerbau Hospital (KKH) — a women's hospital where most babies in Singapore were delivered — saw over 100 deliveries per day in 1962. In 1966, KKH delivered 39835 babies, earning it a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for "largest number of births in a single maternity facility" each year for ten years. Because there was generally a massive shortage of beds in that era, mothers with routine deliveries were discharged from hospitals within 24 hours.
came to power, and in September 1965 the Minister for Health
, Yong Nyuk Lin
, submitted a white paper to Parliament, recommending a Five-year Mass Family Planning programme that would reduce the birth rate to 20.0 per thousand individuals by 1970. This was to become the National Family Programme; in 1966, the Family Planning and Population Board (FPPB) had been established based on the findings of the white paper, providing clinical services and public education on family planning. Initially allocated a budget of $1 million SGD for the entire programme, the FPPB faced a resistant population, but eventually serviced over 156,000. The Family Planning Association was absorbed activities of the FPPB.
Lee Kuan Yew as first Prime Minister of Singapore held wide sway over the government's social policies before 1990.
Lee Kuan Yew was recorded in 1967 as believing that "five percent" of a society's population, "who are more than ordinarily endowed physically and mentally," should be allocated the best of a country's limited resources to provide "a catalyst" for that society's progress. Such a policy for Singapore would "ensure that Singapore shall maintain its pre-eminent place" in Southeast Asia. Similar views shaped education policy and meritocracy in Singapore.
; though birth rates fell from 1957 to 1970, in 1970, birth rates rose as women who were themselves the product of the postwar baby boom reached maturity. Fearing that Singapore's growing population might overburden the developing economy, Lee started a vigorous Stop at Two family planning campaign. Abortion
and sterilisation were legalised in 1970, and women were urged to get sterilised after their second child. Women without a O-level degree, deemed low-income and lowly-educated, were offered by the government seven days' paid sick leave and $10,000 SGD in cash incentives to to voluntarily undergo the procedure.
The government also added a gradually increasing array of disincentives penalising parents for having more than two children between 1969 and 1972, raising the per-child costs of each additional child:
The government created a large array of public education material for the Stop at Two campaign, in one of the early examples of the public social engineering
campaigns the government would continue to implement (e.g. the Speak Mandarin
, Speak Good English
, National Courtesy
, Keep Singapore Clean
and Toilet Flushing Campaigns) that would lead to its reputation as "paternalistic" and "interventionist" in social affairs. The "Stop at Two" media campaign from 1970 to 1976 was led by Basskaran Nair, press section head of the Ministry of Culture
, and created posters with lasting legacy: a 2008 Straits Times article wrote, "many middle-aged Singaporeans will remember the poster of two cute girls sharing an umbrella and an apple: The umbrella fit two nicely. Three would have been a crowd." This same poster was also referred to in Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong
's 2008 National Day Rally
speech. Many other posters from the "iconic" campaign included similar themes of being content with two girls, in order to combat the common trend in developing Asian societies for families with only daughters to continue "trying for a boy".
In addition to promoting just having two children, the government also encouraged individuals to delay having their second child and to marry late, reinforcing the inevitable demographic transition
. Other slogans and campaign material exhorted Singaporeans with such messages as:
The Straits Times interviewed mothers who were sterilised in that era, noting it was common to get sterilised at a young age, citing a woman who had undergone tubal ligation
at KKH at the age of 23, herself coming from a large family of ten. "The pressure [disincentives] was high. The Government clearly didn't want us to have more than two." A gynaecologist doctor who worked KKH recalled sterilisation rates became "sky high" after the disincentives had been implemented; it was common for hospital workers to chide women who were pregnant with third-order or higher births, recommending abortions, while such women talked about their pregnancy "[as if] they committed a crime". The Straits Times also suggested the disincentives had been very effective; one woman cited how sterilisation certification had to be shown to a school for a third child to receive priority, while she and four out of five sisters eventually underwent sterilisation. Expensive delivery fees ("accouchement fees") for third-order and higher births would also be waived with sterilisation.
The campaign was known to target the uneducated in particular; Lee believed that, "Free education
and subsidised housing lead to a situation where the less economically productive people ... are reproducing themselves at [a higher rate]." He believed that implementing a system of government disincentives would stop "the irresponsible, the social delinquents" from thinking that having more children would entitle them to more government-provided social services.
The government justified its social policy as a means of encouraging the poor to concentrate their limited resources on nurturing their existing children, making them more likely to be capable, productive citizens. The government also had to respond to criticism that this policy favoured Chinese over minority races
; Malays and Indians were stereotyped to have have higher birth rates and bigger families than the Chinese, further fuelling accusations of eugenics. In 1987, Goh Chok Tong
, at that time the 1st Deputy Prime Minister, clarified to the press that "the Government 'had no objection' to those with less than secondary education having more children if they could afford them."
" was occurring in Singapore as with other countries; increases in income, education and health and the role of women in the workforce were strongly correlated to levels of low population growth. According to a paper by the Library of Congress
, by the 1980s, "Singapore's vital statistics resembled those of other countries with comparable income levels but without Singapore's publicity campaigns and elaborate array of administrative incentives."
Lee Kuan Yew was alarmed at the perceived demographic trend that educated women — most of all the college-educated — would be less likely to marry and procreate. Such a trend would run antithetical to his demographic policy, and part of this failure, Lee conjectured, was "the apparent preference of male university graduates for less highly educated wives". This trend was deemed in a 1983 speech as "a serious social problem". Starting 1984, the government of Singapore gave education and housing priorities, tax rebates and other benefits to mothers with a university degree, as well as their children. The government also encouraged Singapore men to choose highly-educated women as wives, establishing the Social Development Unit
(SDU) that year to promote socialising among men and women graduates, a unit that was also nicknamed "Single, Desperate and Ugly". The government also provided incentives for educated mothers to have three or four children, in what was the beginning of the reversal of the original Stop at Two policy. The measures sparked controversy and what became known as The Great Marriage Debate in the press. Some sections of the population, including graduate women, were upset by the views of Lee Kuan Yew, who had questioned that perhaps the campaign for women's rights
had been too successful:
In 1985, especially controversial portions of the policy that gave education and housing priorities to educated women were eventually abandoned or modified.
A 1992 study noted that 61% of women giving birth had secondary education or higher, but this proportion dropped for third-order births (52%) and fourth-or-higher-order births (36%), supporting the idea that more children per capita continue to be born to women with less qualifications, and correspondingly, lower income.
In October 1987, future Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong
, then a young Brigadier General, exhorted Singaporeans to procreate rather than "passively watch ourselves going extinct". United Press International
noted the "baffled" reaction of parents, many who had grown up in an era where they were told that having more than two children was "antisocial". One parent commented, "are we being told to have more children for the sake of the country or for ourselves?" Goh Chok Tong, despite the skepticism, remained optimistic that the population rate would restored to the replacement rate by 1995. An NUS sociologist however, observed that Singapore had "a new breed of women" — one "involved in their careers [and] used to a certain amount of leisure and more material possessions" — and hence would not be as receptive to financial incentives like previous women of the 1960s and the 1970s. , Singapore's birth rate has not yet been restored to replacement level.
.
Reports of reproduction rates in Singapore are still racialised, while Lee Kuan Yew is considered a racialist: Channel NewsAsia
reported in January 2011 that the fertility rate of Singaporeans in 2010 were 1.02 for Chinese
, 1.13 for Indians and 1.65 for Malays. In 2008, Lee Kuan Yew, known for his remarks on the Malay community, said the below-national-average birth rate for the Chinese was a "worrying trend". That same year, he was quoted as saying, "[If] you marry a non-graduate, then you are going to worry if your son or daughter is going to make it to the university."
Different sources have offered differing judgments on the government policies' impact on the population structure of Singapore. While most agree that the policies have been very interventionist, comprehensive and broad, the Library of Congress Country Study argues "it is impossible to separate the effects of government policies from the broader socioeconomic forces promoting later marriage and smaller families," suggesting that the government could only work with or work against much more powerful natural demographic trends. To the researchers of the study, the methods used in 1987 to attempt to reverse the falling birth rate was a demonstration of "the government's [continued] assumption" that citizens were receptive towards monetary incentives and administrative allocation of social services when it came to family planning.
However Saw Swee Hock, a statistician and demographer quoted in the Straits Times in 2008, argued the demographic transition "was rapid because of the government's strong population control measures," but also admitted that, "even without the Stop At Two policy, the [total fertility rate] would have gone below 2.1 due to [the demographic transition]." When demographic transition statistics are examined — in 1960, the total fertility rate was approximately ~6 — Asian MetaCentre researcher Theresa Wong notes that Singaporean birth rates and death rates fell dramatically in a period that occurred over "much shorter time period than in Western countries," yet such a short time frame is also seen in other Southeast Asian countries, where family planning campaigns were much less aggressive. According to Saw Swee Hock, "the measures were comprehensive and strong, but they weren't reversed quickly enough".
Though newer modern policies exhibit "signs that the government is beginning to recognise the ineffectiveness of a
purely monetary approach to increasing birth rates", a former civil servant noted that the government needs "to learn to fine-tune to the emotions rather than to dollars and cents. It should appeal more to the sense of fulfilment of having children". Such measures include promoting workplaces that encourage spending time with the family, and creating a "Romancing Singapore Campaign" that "[directly avoided being linked] to pro-children and pro-family initiatives," since "people get turned off" when the government appears to intervene in such intimate social affairs as marriage. However, this is still seen by some citizens as "trivialising" love and "emotional expression", which "should not be engineered". In 2001, the government announced a Baby Bonus
scheme, which paid $9000 SGD for the second child and $18000 for the third child over six years to "defray the costs of having children", and would match "dollar for dollar" what money parents would put into a Child Development Account (CDA) up to $6000 and $12000 for the second and third child respectively. In 2002, Goh Chok Tong advised "pragmatic" late marriers "to act fast. The timing is good now to get a choice flat to start a family."
Population control
Human population control is the practice of artificially altering the rate of growth of a human population.Historically, human population control has been implemented by limiting the population's birth rate, usually by government mandate, and has been undertaken as a response to factors including...
in Singapore spans two distinct phases: first to slow and reverse the boom in births that started after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
; and then, from the 1980s onwards, to encourage parents to have more children because birth numbers had fallen below replacement levels. Government eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
policies flavoured both phases.
Family planning
Family planning
Family planning is the planning of when to have children, and the use of birth control and other techniques to implement such plans. Other techniques commonly used include sexuality education, prevention and management of sexually transmitted infections, pre-conception counseling and...
was introduced to Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
in 1949 by volunteers that started clinic
Clinic
A clinic is a health care facility that is primarily devoted to the care of outpatients...
s offering contraception
Contraception
Contraception is the prevention of the fusion of gametes during or after sexual activity. The term contraception is a contraction of contra, which means against, and the word conception, meaning fertilization...
, but despite government financial support there was no official government policy on family planning until the 1960s. In 1966, the Family Planning and Population Board (FPPB) was established, initially advocating small families but eventually pushing for zero population growth
Zero population growth
Zero population growth, sometimes abbreviated ZPG , is a condition of demographic balance where the number of people in a specified population neither grows nor declines, considered as a social aim....
into what became popularly known as the Stop at Two programme, also referred to in academia as the "anti-natalist" era. This programme pushed for small two-children families and promoted sterilisation through various incentives and laws for all society. From 1969 it was also used by government leaders to target lowly-educated and low-income women in an experiment with eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
policies to solve social concerns.
By 1982, government leaders such as then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew
Lee Kuan Yew
Lee Kuan Yew, GCMG, CH is a Singaporean statesman. He was the first Prime Minister of the Republic of Singapore, governing for three decades...
became worried by the demographic trend that the educated were less likely to marry and procreate than the uneducated, leading to the "dilution of innate human talent" in Singapore. This concern drove various changes in policy that culminated in the Graduate Mothers' Scheme. Announced by then Minister for Education
Ministry of Education
Several countries have government departments named the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Public Education. The first such ministry ever is considered to be the Commission of National Education Several countries have government departments named the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of...
Goh Keng Swee
Goh Keng Swee
Goh Keng Swee was the second Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore between 1973 and 1984, and a Member of Parliament for the Kreta Ayer constituency for a quarter of a century. Born in Malacca in the Straits Settlements into a Peranakan family, he came to Singapore at the age of two years...
on January 23, 1984, the policy gave the children of mothers with a university degree priority in the often heavily-competitive primary school placement and registration process
Education in Singapore
Education in Singapore is managed by the Ministry of Education , which controls the development and administration of state schools receiving government funding, but also has an advisory and supervisory role in respect of private schools...
over the lesser-educated. This issue faced large outcry in the 1984 general elections and was scrapped by the incoming Minister of Education Tony Tan Keng Yam mid-1985.
At the same time, Singapore, like other countries facing industrialisation
Industrialisation
Industrialization is the process of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial one...
and economic development
Economic development
Economic development generally refers to the sustained, concerted actions of policymakers and communities that promote the standard of living and economic health of a specific area...
, had been undergoing the demographic transition
Demographic transition
The demographic transition model is the transition from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates as a country develops from a pre-industrial to an industrialized economic system. The theory is based on an interpretation of demographic history developed in 1929 by the American...
and birth rates had fallen precipitously, a trend only reinforced by the Stop at Two programme. The government had begun to reverse the policy, and officially announced its replacement Have Three or More (if you can afford it) in 1987, while the government continued its efforts to ameliorate the quality and quantity of the population through various incentives, including baby bonus
Baby Bonus
The Baby Bonus is a government payment to parents of a newborn baby or adopted child to assist with the costs of childrearing.- Australia :The government of Andrew Fisher introduced a baby bonus of £5 per child in late 1912. The bonus was available irrespective of marital status and could also be...
schemes while discouraging low-income families from having children. The Social Development Unit
Social Development Unit
The Social Development Network , formerly known as "Social Development Unit" , is a governmental body under the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports which works closely with the community and commercial sectors to foster opportunities for singles to interact in social settings in...
(SDU) was also established in 1984 to promote marriage and romance between educated individuals.
Different sources have offered differing judgments on the government policies' impact on the population structure of Singapore. While Stop at Two has been described as basically successful — indeed, in the words of Lee Hsien Loong
Lee Hsien Loong
Lee Hsien Loong is the third and current Prime Minister of Singapore. He is married to Ho Ching, who is the Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of Temasek Holdings. He is the eldest son of Singapore's first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew....
, "over-successful", skeptics of interventionism claim that it is impossible to separate the effects of government policy from the effects of the natural and spontaneous demographic transition — noting that the government's attempts at reversing the falling birth rates due to the demographic transition have been less than successful.
Postwar trends and family planning
From 1947 to 1957, the social forces which caused the post–World War II baby boom elsewhere in the world also occurred in Singapore. The birth rate rose and the death rate fell; the average annual growth rate was 4.4%, of which 1% was due to immigration; Singapore experienced its highest birth rate in 1957 at 42.7 per thousand individuals. (This was also the same year the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
saw its peak birth rate.)
Family planning
Family planning
Family planning is the planning of when to have children, and the use of birth control and other techniques to implement such plans. Other techniques commonly used include sexuality education, prevention and management of sexually transmitted infections, pre-conception counseling and...
was introduced to Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
in 1949 by a group of volunteers that eventually became the Family Planning Association of Singapore and established numerous sexual health clinic
Sexual health clinic
Sexual health clinics specialize in the prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infections.Sexual health clinics provide only some reproductive health services...
s offering contraception, treatments for minor gynecological ailments, and marital advice
Relationship counseling
Relationship counseling is the process of counseling the parties of a relationship in an effort to recognize and to better manage or reconcile troublesome differences and repeating patterns of distress...
. Until the 1960s there was no official government policy in these matters, but the postwar British colonial administration
Post-war Singapore
Post-war Singapore refers to a period in the history of Singapore from 1945, when the Empire of Japan surrendered to the Allies at the end of World War II, until 1955, when Singapore gained partial internal self-governance.-Return of British rule:...
, followed by the Singaporean government, played an increasingly important role by providing ever larger grants to the Association, as well as land for its facilities network, culminating in 1960 with a three-month nationwide family planning campaign that was jointly conducted by the Association and government. The population growth rate slowed from 4-5% per year
Baby boom
A baby boom is any period marked by a greatly increased birth rate. This demographic phenomenon is usually ascribed within certain geographical bounds and when the number of annual births exceeds 2 per 100 women...
in the 1950s to around 2.5% in 1965 around independence. The birth rate had fallen to 29.5 per thousand individuals, and the natural growth rate had fallen to 2.5%.
Singapore's population expansion can be seen in the graph below:
| Period | Growth |
|---|---|
| 1947—1957 | 84.7% |
| 1957—1970 | 90.8% |
| 1970—1980 | 13.3% |
| 1980—1990 | 18.5% |
| 1990—2000 | 20.6% |
Overcrowding concerns
At the time of independence, many Singaporeans lived in the Central AreaCentral Area
In Singapore, the Central Area or Central Business District contains the core financial and commercial districts, including eleven urban planning areas, namely Downtown Core, Marina East, Marina South, Museum, Newton, Orchard, Outram, River Valley, Rochor, Singapore River and Straits View as...
in overcrowded shophouse
Shophouse
A shophouse is a vernacular architectural building type that is commonly seen in areas such as urban Southeast Asia. This hybrid building form characterises the historical centres of most towns and cities in the region.- Design and features :...
s; and the bulk of the work of the Housing Development Board had not yet been completed. In 1947, the British Housing Committee Report noted Singapore had "one of the world’s worst slum
Slum
A slum, as defined by United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. According to the United Nations, the percentage of urban dwellers living in slums decreased from 47 percent to 37 percent in the...
s — ‘a disgrace to a civilised community'", and the average person per building density was 18.2 by 1947 (high-rise buildings had yet to be constructed en masse); about 550,000 people lived in squalid squatter settlements or "ramshackle shophouse
Shophouse
A shophouse is a vernacular architectural building type that is commonly seen in areas such as urban Southeast Asia. This hybrid building form characterises the historical centres of most towns and cities in the region.- Design and features :...
s" by 1966. Rapid population growth
Population growth
Population growth is the change in a population over time, and can be quantified as the change in the number of individuals of any species in a population using "per unit time" for measurement....
was perceived as a threat to "political stability and living standards" that lead to population overcrowding that would overwhelm employment opportunities and social services in education, health and sanitation.
Despite their fall since 1957, birth rates in the 1960s were still perceived as high. On average, a baby was born every 11 minutes in 1965; Kandang Kerbau Hospital (KKH) — a women's hospital where most babies in Singapore were delivered — saw over 100 deliveries per day in 1962. In 1966, KKH delivered 39835 babies, earning it a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for "largest number of births in a single maternity facility" each year for ten years. Because there was generally a massive shortage of beds in that era, mothers with routine deliveries were discharged from hospitals within 24 hours.
Establishent of the FPPB
In 1959, the People's Action PartyPeople's Action Party
The People's Action Party is the leading political party in Singapore. It has been the city-state's ruling political party since 1959....
came to power, and in September 1965 the Minister for Health
Ministry of Health (Singapore)
The Ministry of Health is a ministry of the Government of Singapore responsible for providing information, raising health awareness and education, ensuring the accessibility of health services, and monitoring the quality of health services provided to citizens and visitors in the Republic of...
, Yong Nyuk Lin
Yong Nyuk Lin
Yong Nyuk Lin is a Singaporean politician. He was born in Seremban, Negri Sembilan, Malaysia and studied in Singapore. He was the general manager of Overseas Assurance Company when he resigned to stand for elections in 1959. He became the Member of Parliament for Geylang West. He was in...
, submitted a white paper to Parliament, recommending a Five-year Mass Family Planning programme that would reduce the birth rate to 20.0 per thousand individuals by 1970. This was to become the National Family Programme; in 1966, the Family Planning and Population Board (FPPB) had been established based on the findings of the white paper, providing clinical services and public education on family planning. Initially allocated a budget of $1 million SGD for the entire programme, the FPPB faced a resistant population, but eventually serviced over 156,000. The Family Planning Association was absorbed activities of the FPPB.
Lee Kuan Yew as first Prime Minister of Singapore held wide sway over the government's social policies before 1990.
Lee Kuan Yew was recorded in 1967 as believing that "five percent" of a society's population, "who are more than ordinarily endowed physically and mentally," should be allocated the best of a country's limited resources to provide "a catalyst" for that society's progress. Such a policy for Singapore would "ensure that Singapore shall maintain its pre-eminent place" in Southeast Asia. Similar views shaped education policy and meritocracy in Singapore.
Stop at Two
In the late 1960s, Singapore was a developing nation and had not yet undergone the demographic transitionDemographic transition
The demographic transition model is the transition from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates as a country develops from a pre-industrial to an industrialized economic system. The theory is based on an interpretation of demographic history developed in 1929 by the American...
; though birth rates fell from 1957 to 1970, in 1970, birth rates rose as women who were themselves the product of the postwar baby boom reached maturity. Fearing that Singapore's growing population might overburden the developing economy, Lee started a vigorous Stop at Two family planning campaign. Abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
and sterilisation were legalised in 1970, and women were urged to get sterilised after their second child. Women without a O-level degree, deemed low-income and lowly-educated, were offered by the government seven days' paid sick leave and $10,000 SGD in cash incentives to to voluntarily undergo the procedure.
The government also added a gradually increasing array of disincentives penalising parents for having more than two children between 1969 and 1972, raising the per-child costs of each additional child:
- Workers in the public sector would not receive maternity leave for their third child or any subsequent children
- Hospitals were required to charge incrementally higher fees for each additional child.
- Income tax deductions would only be given for the first two children
- Large families were penalised in housing assignments.
- Third or fourth children were given lower priorities in education;
- Top priority in top-tier primary schools would be given only to children whose parents had been sterilised before the age of forty.
The government created a large array of public education material for the Stop at Two campaign, in one of the early examples of the public social engineering
Social engineering
Social engineering may refer to:* Social engineering , efforts to influence society on a large scale* Social engineering , the practice of obtaining confidential information by manipulating and/or deceiving people....
campaigns the government would continue to implement (e.g. the Speak Mandarin
Speak Mandarin Campaign
The Speak Mandarin Campaign is an initiative by the government of Singapore to encourage the Singaporean Chinese population to speak Mandarin, one of the four official languages of Singapore...
, Speak Good English
Speak Good English Movement
The Speak Good English Movement is a Singapore Government campaign to "encourage Singaporeans to speak grammatically correct English that is universally understood".It was launched by then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong on 29 April 2000...
, National Courtesy
National Courtesy Campaign (Singapore)
The National Courtesy Campaign was a campaign launched in June 1979 by Singapore's Ministry of Culture as a means of encouraging Singaporeans to be more kind and considerate to each other, so as to create a pleasant social environment. It was to be an annual effort by the government to encourage...
, Keep Singapore Clean
National Environment Agency
National Environment Agency formed on 1 July 2002, is a statutory board under the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources in Singapore. As a statutory board, it gives NEA greater administrative autonomy to be more nimble in the protection of the environment...
and Toilet Flushing Campaigns) that would lead to its reputation as "paternalistic" and "interventionist" in social affairs. The "Stop at Two" media campaign from 1970 to 1976 was led by Basskaran Nair, press section head of the Ministry of Culture
Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts
The Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts is a ministry of the Government of Singapore...
, and created posters with lasting legacy: a 2008 Straits Times article wrote, "many middle-aged Singaporeans will remember the poster of two cute girls sharing an umbrella and an apple: The umbrella fit two nicely. Three would have been a crowd." This same poster was also referred to in Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong
Lee Hsien Loong
Lee Hsien Loong is the third and current Prime Minister of Singapore. He is married to Ho Ching, who is the Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of Temasek Holdings. He is the eldest son of Singapore's first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew....
's 2008 National Day Rally
National Day Rally
The National Day Rally is an annual address that the Prime Minister of Singapore makes to the entire nation, on the second Sunday after August 9, the country's National Day...
speech. Many other posters from the "iconic" campaign included similar themes of being content with two girls, in order to combat the common trend in developing Asian societies for families with only daughters to continue "trying for a boy".
In addition to promoting just having two children, the government also encouraged individuals to delay having their second child and to marry late, reinforcing the inevitable demographic transition
Demographic transition
The demographic transition model is the transition from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates as a country develops from a pre-industrial to an industrialized economic system. The theory is based on an interpretation of demographic history developed in 1929 by the American...
. Other slogans and campaign material exhorted Singaporeans with such messages as:
- "Small Families -- Brighter Future: Two is enough" (this message captioned a photo two young girls)
- "The second can wait" (a mother and father are seen as being happy with one child)
- "Teenage marriage means rushing into problems: A happy marriage is worth waiting for"
- "One, Two: And that's ideal: Sterilisation, the best method for Family Limitation" (shown with a cartoon of two girls' faces)
- "Take your time to say 'yes'"
- Small Family: Brighter Future
- "Please stop at two!" (a stork carries a four-member nuclear family)
The Straits Times interviewed mothers who were sterilised in that era, noting it was common to get sterilised at a young age, citing a woman who had undergone tubal ligation
Tubal ligation
Tubal ligation or tubectomy is a surgical procedure for sterilization in which a woman's fallopian tubes are clamped and blocked, or severed and sealed, either method of which prevents eggs from reaching the uterus for fertilization...
at KKH at the age of 23, herself coming from a large family of ten. "The pressure [disincentives] was high. The Government clearly didn't want us to have more than two." A gynaecologist doctor who worked KKH recalled sterilisation rates became "sky high" after the disincentives had been implemented; it was common for hospital workers to chide women who were pregnant with third-order or higher births, recommending abortions, while such women talked about their pregnancy "[as if] they committed a crime". The Straits Times also suggested the disincentives had been very effective; one woman cited how sterilisation certification had to be shown to a school for a third child to receive priority, while she and four out of five sisters eventually underwent sterilisation. Expensive delivery fees ("accouchement fees") for third-order and higher births would also be waived with sterilisation.
The campaign was known to target the uneducated in particular; Lee believed that, "Free education
Free education
Free education refers to education that is funded through taxation, or charitable organizations rather than tuition fees. Although primary school and other comprehensive or compulsory education is free in many countries, for example, all education is mostly free including...
and subsidised housing lead to a situation where the less economically productive people ... are reproducing themselves at [a higher rate]." He believed that implementing a system of government disincentives would stop "the irresponsible, the social delinquents" from thinking that having more children would entitle them to more government-provided social services.
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- We must encourage those who earn less than $200 per month and cannot afford to nurture and educate many children never to have more than two...we will regret the time lost if we do not now take the first tentative steps towards correcting a trend which can leave our society with a large number of the physically, intellectually and culturally anaemic. Lee Kuan YewLee Kuan YewLee Kuan Yew, GCMG, CH is a Singaporean statesman. He was the first Prime Minister of the Republic of Singapore, governing for three decades...
, 1969
- We must encourage those who earn less than $200 per month and cannot afford to nurture and educate many children never to have more than two...we will regret the time lost if we do not now take the first tentative steps towards correcting a trend which can leave our society with a large number of the physically, intellectually and culturally anaemic. Lee Kuan Yew
The government justified its social policy as a means of encouraging the poor to concentrate their limited resources on nurturing their existing children, making them more likely to be capable, productive citizens. The government also had to respond to criticism that this policy favoured Chinese over minority races
Race in Singapore
The concept of race or ethnicity in contemporary Singapore combines British colonial attitudes with the approach taken by leaders of local anti-colonial movements. The definition of 'race' in Singapore has changed little since the 1960s...
; Malays and Indians were stereotyped to have have higher birth rates and bigger families than the Chinese, further fuelling accusations of eugenics. In 1987, Goh Chok Tong
Goh Chok Tong
Goh Chok Tong is the Senior Minister of Singapore and the chairman of the central bank of Singapore, the Monetary Authority of Singapore. He also served as the second Prime Minister of the Republic of Singapore from 28 November 1990 to 12 August 2004, succeeding Lee Kuan Yew, the former Prime...
, at that time the 1st Deputy Prime Minister, clarified to the press that "the Government 'had no objection' to those with less than secondary education having more children if they could afford them."
The demographic transition and the Graduate Mothers Scheme
As Singapore modernised in the 1970s, fertility continued to drop. The natural replacement rate reached 1.006 in 1975; thereafter the replacement rate would drop below unity. Furthermore, the so-called "demographic giftDemographic gift
Demographic gift is a term in demographics used to describe the initially favorable effect of falling fertility rates on the age dependency ratio, the fraction of children and aged as compared to that of the working population.-Overview:...
" was occurring in Singapore as with other countries; increases in income, education and health and the role of women in the workforce were strongly correlated to levels of low population growth. According to a paper by the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
, by the 1980s, "Singapore's vital statistics resembled those of other countries with comparable income levels but without Singapore's publicity campaigns and elaborate array of administrative incentives."
Lee Kuan Yew was alarmed at the perceived demographic trend that educated women — most of all the college-educated — would be less likely to marry and procreate. Such a trend would run antithetical to his demographic policy, and part of this failure, Lee conjectured, was "the apparent preference of male university graduates for less highly educated wives". This trend was deemed in a 1983 speech as "a serious social problem". Starting 1984, the government of Singapore gave education and housing priorities, tax rebates and other benefits to mothers with a university degree, as well as their children. The government also encouraged Singapore men to choose highly-educated women as wives, establishing the Social Development Unit
Social Development Unit
The Social Development Network , formerly known as "Social Development Unit" , is a governmental body under the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports which works closely with the community and commercial sectors to foster opportunities for singles to interact in social settings in...
(SDU) that year to promote socialising among men and women graduates, a unit that was also nicknamed "Single, Desperate and Ugly". The government also provided incentives for educated mothers to have three or four children, in what was the beginning of the reversal of the original Stop at Two policy. The measures sparked controversy and what became known as The Great Marriage Debate in the press. Some sections of the population, including graduate women, were upset by the views of Lee Kuan Yew, who had questioned that perhaps the campaign for women's rights
Women's rights
Women's rights are entitlements and freedoms claimed for women and girls of all ages in many societies.In some places these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behaviour, whereas in others they may be ignored or suppressed...
had been too successful:
In 1985, especially controversial portions of the policy that gave education and housing priorities to educated women were eventually abandoned or modified.
A 1992 study noted that 61% of women giving birth had secondary education or higher, but this proportion dropped for third-order births (52%) and fourth-or-higher-order births (36%), supporting the idea that more children per capita continue to be born to women with less qualifications, and correspondingly, lower income.
Have Three or More (if you can afford it)
In 1986 the government had recognised that falling birth rates were a serious problem and began to reverse its past policy of Stop at Two, encouraging higher birth rates instead. By 30 June of that year, the government had abolished the Family Planning and Population Board, and by 1987, the total fertility rate had dropped to 1.44. That year, Goh Chok Tong announced a new slogan: Have Three or More (if you can afford it), announcing that the government now promoted a larger family size of three or more children for married couples who could afford them, and promoted "the joys of marriage and parenthood". The new policy took into account Singapore's falling fertility rate and its increased proportion of the elderly, but was still concerned with the "disproportionate procreation" of the educated versus the uneducated, and discouraged having more than two children if the couple did not have sufficient income, in order to minimise the amount of welfare aid spent on such families. The government also relaxed its immigration policies.In October 1987, future Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong
Lee Hsien Loong
Lee Hsien Loong is the third and current Prime Minister of Singapore. He is married to Ho Ching, who is the Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of Temasek Holdings. He is the eldest son of Singapore's first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew....
, then a young Brigadier General, exhorted Singaporeans to procreate rather than "passively watch ourselves going extinct". United Press International
United Press International
United Press International is a once-major international news agency, whose newswires, photo, news film and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines and radio and television stations for most of the twentieth century...
noted the "baffled" reaction of parents, many who had grown up in an era where they were told that having more than two children was "antisocial". One parent commented, "are we being told to have more children for the sake of the country or for ourselves?" Goh Chok Tong, despite the skepticism, remained optimistic that the population rate would restored to the replacement rate by 1995. An NUS sociologist however, observed that Singapore had "a new breed of women" — one "involved in their careers [and] used to a certain amount of leisure and more material possessions" — and hence would not be as receptive to financial incentives like previous women of the 1960s and the 1970s. , Singapore's birth rate has not yet been restored to replacement level.
Policy comparisons between Have Three or More and Stop at Two, starting 1988
- Mothers with a third child would get 750 SGD in child relief (factoring historic exchange rates, this was about $662 in 2010 USD dollars). If a mother had three 'O'-level passes in one sitting, she would qualify for an enhanced child relief rebate (lowered from a threshold of five passes). Having a fourth child would qualify for enhanced child relief of 750 SGD plus 15% of the mother's income, up to $10000 SGD.
- All disincentives and penalties given in school registration to families with more than two children are to be removed; in the presence of competition, priority would be allocated to families with more than two children.
- Subsidies for each child in a government-run or government-approved child care centre
- MedisaveMedisaveMedisave was introduced in April 1984 as a national medical savings account system for Singaporeans. The system allows Singaporeans to put aside part of their income into a Medisave account to meet future personal or immediate family's hospitalization, day surgery and for certain outpatient...
could now be authorised for hospital costs of a third child (previously forbidden under the Stop at Two policy) - Families with more than two children with a HDB flat of three rooms or higher would receive priority if they desired to upgrade to a larger flat
- "AbortionAbortionAbortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
s of convenience" discouraged, with compulsory abortion counselling - Women undergoing sterilisation with less than three children would receive compulsory counselling
- Expansion of the SDU's role and authority; recognising that the low birth rate reflected late marriages, the SDU also wooed those with postsecondary A-level qualificationsGCE Advanced LevelThe Advanced Level General Certificate of Education, commonly referred to as an A-level, is a qualification offered by education institutions in England, Northern Ireland, Wales, Cameroon, and the Cayman Islands...
rather than just college graduates - Starting 1990, a tax rebate of 20,000 SGD (18,000 USD in 2010 dollars, factoring historic exchange rates) were given to mothers who had their second child before the age of 28
- Starting 1993, the sterilisation cash grant for lowly-educated women was liberalised, allowing women to agree to use reversible contraceptionContraceptionContraception is the prevention of the fusion of gametes during or after sexual activity. The term contraception is a contraction of contra, which means against, and the word conception, meaning fertilization...
rather than sterilisation; educational bursariesBursaryA bursary is strictly an office for a bursar and his or her staff in a school or college.In modern English usage, the term has become synonymous with "bursary award", a monetary award made by an institution to an individual or a group to assist the development of their education.According to The...
for existing children were added as existing benefits, so long as the number did not exceed two.
Modern legacy and current practices
The modern SDU, renamed the Social Development Network (SDN) in 2009, encourages all Singaporean couples to procreate and marry in order to reverse Singapore's negative replacement rate. Some of the social welfare, dating and marriage encouragement, and family planning policies are also managed by the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and SportsMinistry of Community Development, Youth and Sports
The Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports is a ministry of the Government of Singapore tasked with, from the government's point of view, building a "cohesive and resilient" society in Singapore.The MCYS often pursues vigorous social engineering campaigns of varying effectiveness and...
.
Reports of reproduction rates in Singapore are still racialised, while Lee Kuan Yew is considered a racialist: Channel NewsAsia
Channel NewsAsia
Channel NewsAsia is an English language pan-Asian news network based in Singapore and owned by MediaCorp. Started on 1 March 1999 based in Singapore by Television Corporation of Singapore, it was launched internationally on 12 February 2001 as the international broadcasting arm of Channel...
reported in January 2011 that the fertility rate of Singaporeans in 2010 were 1.02 for Chinese
Singaporean Chinese
Singaporean Chinese may refer to:* Chinese Singaporean, the citizens or residents of Singapore who are of Chinese ancestry* Singaporean Mandarin, the dialect of Mandarin Chinese spoken in Singapore...
, 1.13 for Indians and 1.65 for Malays. In 2008, Lee Kuan Yew, known for his remarks on the Malay community, said the below-national-average birth rate for the Chinese was a "worrying trend". That same year, he was quoted as saying, "[If] you marry a non-graduate, then you are going to worry if your son or daughter is going to make it to the university."
Different sources have offered differing judgments on the government policies' impact on the population structure of Singapore. While most agree that the policies have been very interventionist, comprehensive and broad, the Library of Congress Country Study argues "it is impossible to separate the effects of government policies from the broader socioeconomic forces promoting later marriage and smaller families," suggesting that the government could only work with or work against much more powerful natural demographic trends. To the researchers of the study, the methods used in 1987 to attempt to reverse the falling birth rate was a demonstration of "the government's [continued] assumption" that citizens were receptive towards monetary incentives and administrative allocation of social services when it came to family planning.
However Saw Swee Hock, a statistician and demographer quoted in the Straits Times in 2008, argued the demographic transition "was rapid because of the government's strong population control measures," but also admitted that, "even without the Stop At Two policy, the [total fertility rate] would have gone below 2.1 due to [the demographic transition]." When demographic transition statistics are examined — in 1960, the total fertility rate was approximately ~6 — Asian MetaCentre researcher Theresa Wong notes that Singaporean birth rates and death rates fell dramatically in a period that occurred over "much shorter time period than in Western countries," yet such a short time frame is also seen in other Southeast Asian countries, where family planning campaigns were much less aggressive. According to Saw Swee Hock, "the measures were comprehensive and strong, but they weren't reversed quickly enough".
Though newer modern policies exhibit "signs that the government is beginning to recognise the ineffectiveness of a
purely monetary approach to increasing birth rates", a former civil servant noted that the government needs "to learn to fine-tune to the emotions rather than to dollars and cents. It should appeal more to the sense of fulfilment of having children". Such measures include promoting workplaces that encourage spending time with the family, and creating a "Romancing Singapore Campaign" that "[directly avoided being linked] to pro-children and pro-family initiatives," since "people get turned off" when the government appears to intervene in such intimate social affairs as marriage. However, this is still seen by some citizens as "trivialising" love and "emotional expression", which "should not be engineered". In 2001, the government announced a Baby Bonus
Baby Bonus
The Baby Bonus is a government payment to parents of a newborn baby or adopted child to assist with the costs of childrearing.- Australia :The government of Andrew Fisher introduced a baby bonus of £5 per child in late 1912. The bonus was available irrespective of marital status and could also be...
scheme, which paid $9000 SGD for the second child and $18000 for the third child over six years to "defray the costs of having children", and would match "dollar for dollar" what money parents would put into a Child Development Account (CDA) up to $6000 and $12000 for the second and third child respectively. In 2002, Goh Chok Tong advised "pragmatic" late marriers "to act fast. The timing is good now to get a choice flat to start a family."